PiNet: My Home Automation Solution in 2024.

No Cloud. No Data-sharing. Simple browser interface.

Why describe my home control network here? Well, it's complicated. Bottom line, if I did it, you can do it. And you might want to. So here's how it started, and here's what I did. (There is more at drgerg.com.)

There are a bunch of Home Automation options out there, but none of them made me feel good. Besides that, I really didn't set out to do a whole centralized control system, it just sorta morphed from a simple wish. (June 2024: a new project brings MQTT to PiNet. Not revolutionary, but accessory. I intend to document that.)

One Simple Wish - the garage door,

It started with my wish to know whether my garage door was open or not. In 2015 I wrote my first Python program, and ohd was born.

then the pool,

Then we got a in-ground pool in the backyard. The commercial controller was abominable, so I picked up another Raspberry Pi, a relay board, and wrote my second Python application, poolApp.py.

then the Weather Station,

When I dumped the second Accurite weather station into the trash in only two years, I started my quest for a Reliable, Robust, Repairable Raspberry Pi-based Weather Station. The station lives outside on a pole, but I wanted the database in the house.

I had a little i3 Lenovo computer that really wasn't doing anything, so I thought it made sense to put it to work holding the mySQL database for the weather station. So I stuck a 4TB hard drive in it that I pulled out of a WD MyBook external and put it to work.

then the web-based UI (VPN or local-only, not Internet),

Not much later I realized I needed a single interface for all this stuff, and allApp.py was born. It runs on Brilliant, the little i3 Lenovo. (allApp is currently housed in the WeatherPi repo.)

and then Eyes (cameras),

Zoneminder was replaced in 2022 by Agent DVR. It runs headless on Ubuntu on a fairly hairy gaming computer bought on sale from Best Buy (this one I didn't build myself). I have four 4K TCP/IP cameras and the two Raspberry Pi Cameras in WeatherPi and LilWeatherPi feeding into it. Our interface to that system is part of the allApp.py running on that cutesy little i3 Lenovo.

and then the shop,

I built myself a pretty nice shop in the back yard. It has A/C for the summer, and heat in the winter. I hated the GE cloud-based App controls for the window unit, so I ripped out the controls electronics and built my own out of, you guessed it, another Pi and relay board. ShopPi was born.

and then the P-Pi's: PlayerPi, PoohPi, and PiddlePi.

Discovering the joy of the 2004 LCD module caused the addition of PlayerPi, PiddlePi and PoohPi to the mix. To be technically accurate, PlayerPi already existed, but didn't have the LCD. At any rate, now there are three, all displaying whatever I want. Sockets-based fun!

LilWeatherPi was added for redundancy.

I added a second version of WeatherPi, but without wind and rainfall sensors. It does have a camera and temp, humidity and pressure sensors. It provides a 'second opinion', which is nice, as well as serving as an emergency backup should something go wrong with the original WeatherPi.

That pretty well describes in a concise manner the PiNet as it exists today. More to come.

Check out the functional diagram AND The Screens of PiNet in the Docs folder.

(c) 2023 - Gregory A Sanders